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How has recognising the importance of social context extended our understanding of children’s abilities and cognitive development?

Jean Piaget argued that ‘individuals develop progressively more elaborate and sophisticated mental representations of the environment, based on their own actions on the environment and the consequences of these’ (Oates, Sheehy and Wood, 2005). He therefore saw cognitive development as a progression which occurred as the child acts on the environment in an increasingly competent manner as the result of the construction of mental pictures as to how the world works (Oates et al, 2005). Piaget paid little attention to social or cultural context in his research and has been criticised heavily for this. In this paper, his theory will be described together with some of the experimental tasks he employed. There will then be a description of the ways in which some of his critics modified his tasks to put them in context and the impact this had on their......

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Approximate Word Count: 2228
Approximate Pages: 9 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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